Madoc

Madoc or Madog ab Owain Gwynedd was, according to folklore, a Welsh prince who sailed to America in 1170, over three hundred years before Christopher Columbus's voyage in 1492.[1] According to the story, he was a son of Owain Gwynedd, and took to the sea to flee internecine violence at home. The "Madoc story" legend evidently evolved out of a medieval tradition about a Welsh hero's sea voyage, to which only allusions survive. However, it attained its greatest prominence during the Elizabethan era, when English and Welsh writers wrote of the claim that Madoc had come to the Americas as an assertion of prior discovery, and hence legal possession, of North America by the Kingdom of England.[2][3]

The "Madoc story" remained popular in later centuries, and a later development asserted that Madoc's voyagers had intermarried with local Native Americans, and that their Welsh-speaking descendants still live somewhere in America. These "Welsh Indians" were credited with the construction of a number of natural and man-made landmarks throughout the American Midwest, and a number of white travellers were inspired to go and look for them. The "Madoc story" has been the subject of much speculation in the context of possible pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact. No historical or archaeological proof of such a man or his voyages has been found in the New or Old World; however speculation abounds connecting him with certain sites, such as Devil's Backbone, located on the Ohio River at Fourteen Mile Creek near Louisville, Kentucky.[4]

Madoc's purported father, Owain Gwynedd, was a real king of Gwynedd during the 12th century and is widely considered one of the greatest Welsh rulers of the Middle Ages. His reign was fraught with battles with other Welsh princes and with Henry II of England. At his death in 1170, a bloody dispute broke out between his heir Hywel the Poet-Prince and Owain's younger sons Maelgwn, Rhodri, and led by Dafydd, two the children of the Princess-Dowager Cristen ferch Gronwy and one the child of Gwladus ferch Llywarch. Owain had at least 13 children from his two wives and several more children born out of wedlock but legally acknowledged under Welsh tradition. According to the legend, Madoc and his brother (Rhirid or Rhiryd) were among them, though no contemporary record attests to this.

The 1584 Historie of Cambria by David Powel says that Madoc was disheartened by this family fighting, and he and Rhirid set sail from Llandrillo (Rhos-on-Sea) in the cantref of Rhos to explore the western ocean with a number of ships.[A] They discovered a distant and abundant land in 1170 where about one hundred men, women and children disembarked to form a colony. According to Humphrey Llwyd's 1559 Cronica Walliae Madoc and some others returned to Wales to recruit additional settlers.[citation needed] After gathering several ships of men, women and children, the Prince and his recruiters sailed west a second time to that Westerne countrie and ported in "Mexico", never to return to Wales again.[7]

Madoc's landing place has also been suggested to be "Mobile Alabama; Florida; Newfoundland; Newport, Rhode Island; Yarmouth, Nova Scotia; Virginia; points in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean including the mouth of the Mississippi River; the Yucatan; the isthmus of Tehuantepec, Panama; the Caribbean coast of South America; various islands in the West Indies and the Bahamas along with Bermuda; and the mouth of the Amazon River."[8] Although the folklore tradition acknowledges that no witness ever returned from the second colonial expedition to report this, the story continues that Madoc's colonists travelled up the vast river systems of North America, raising structures and encountering friendly and unfriendly tribes of Native Americans before finally settling down somewhere in the Midwest or the Great Plains.[9] They are reported to be the founders of various civilisations such as the Aztec, the Maya and the Inca.[8]

The Madoc story evidently originated in medieval romance. There are allusions to what may have been a sea voyage tale akin to The Voyage of Saint Brendan,[citation needed] but no detailed version of it survives.

The earliest certain reference to a seafaring Madoc or Madog appears in a cywydd by the Welsh poet Maredudd ap Rhys (fl. 1450–83) of Powys, which mentions a Madog who is a son or descendant of Owain Gwynedd and who voyaged to the sea. The poem is addressed to a local squire, thanking him for a fishing net on a patron's behalf. Madog is referred to as "Splendid Madog... / Of Owain Gwynedd's line, / He desired not land... / Or worldy wealth but the sea." A Flemish writer called Willem, in around 1250 to 1255,[citation needed] identifies himself in his poem Van den Vos Reinaerde as "Willem die Madocke maecte" (Willem, the author of Madoc, a/k/a "Willem the Minstrel"[B]). Though no copies of "Madoc" survive, Gwyn Williams tells us that "In the seventeenth century a fragment of a reputed copy of the work is said to have been found in Poitiers". It provides no topographical details relating to North America, but mentions a sea that may be the Sargasso Sea and says that Madoc (not related to Owain in the fragment according to Gwyn Williams) discovered an island paradise, where he intended "to launch a new kingdom of love and music".[11][12] There are also claims that the Welsh poet and genealogist Gutun Owain wrote about Madoc before 1492. Gwyn Williams in Madoc, the Making of a Myth, makes it clear that Madoc is not mentioned in any of Owain's surviving manuscripts.[13]

The Madoc legend attained its greatest prominence during the Elizabethan era, when Welsh and English writers used it to bolster British claims in the New World versus those of Spain. The earliest surviving full account of Madoc's voyage, as the first to make the claim that Madoc had come to America before Columbus,[C] appears in Humphrey Llwyd's published 1559 Cronica Walliae,[14] an English adaptation of the Brut y Tywysogion.[15][D]John Dee used his manuscript when he submitted a treatise the "Title Royal" to Queen Elizabeth in 1580 which stated that "The Lord Madoc, sonne to Owen Gwynned, Prince of Gwynedd, led a Colonie and inhabited in Terra Florida or thereabouts" in 1170.[2] The story was first published by George Peckham's as A True Report of the late Discoveries of the Newfound Landes (1583) and like Dee it was used to support English claims to the Americas.[17] It was picked up in David Powel's Historie of Cambria (1584).[17][E] and Richard Hakluyt's The Principall Navigations, Voiages and Discoveries of the English Nation (1589). John Dee went so far as to assert that Brutus of Britain and King Arthur as well as Madoc had conquered lands in the Americas and therefore their heir Elizabeth I of England had a priority claim there.[19][20]

Thomas Herbert popularised the stories told by Dee and Powel, adding more detail from sources unknown and suggesting that Madoc may have landed in Canada, Florida, or even Mexico, reporting that Mexican sources stated that they used currachs.[21]

The Welsh Indians were not claimed until over a century later. Morgan Jones' tract is the first account, and was printed by The Gentleman's Magazine, launching a slew of publications on the subject.[22] There is no genetic or archaeological evidence that the Mandan are related to the Welsh, however, and John Evans and Lewis and Clark reported they had found no Welsh Indians.[23] The Mandan are still alive today; the tribe was decimated by a smallpox epidemic in 1837–1838 and banded with the nearby Hidatsa and Arikara into the Three Affiliated Tribes.[24]

The Welsh Indian legend was revived in the 1840s and 1850s; this time the Zunis, Hopis, and Navajo were claimed to be of Welsh descent, by George Ruxton (Hopis, 1846), P. G. S. Ten Broeck (Zunis, 1854), and Abbé Emmanuel Domenach (Zunis, 1860), among others.[25]Brigham Young became interested in the supposed Hopi-Welsh connection: in 1858 Young sent a Welshman with Jacob Hamblin to the Hopi mesas to check for Welsh-speakers there. None were found, but in 1863 Hamblin brought three Hopi men to Salt Lake City, where they were "besieged by Welshmen wanting them to utter Celtic words," to no avail.[25] Llewellyn Harris, a Welsh-American Mormon missionary who visited the Zuni in 1878, wrote that they had many Welsh words in their language, and that they claimed their descent from the "Cambaraga"—white men who had come by sea 300 years before the Spanish. However, Harris' claims have never been independently verified.[26]

George Catlin thought the Mandan bull boat to be similar to the Welsh coracle

On 26 November 1608, Peter Wynne, a member of Captain Christopher Newport's exploration party to the villages of the Eastern SiouanMonacan above the falls of the James River in Virginia, wrote a letter to John Egerton, informing him that some members of Newport's party believed the pronunciation of the Monacans' language resembled "Welch", which Wynne spoke, and asked Wynne to act as interpreter. The Monacan were among those non-Algonquian tribes collectively referred to by the Algonquians as "Mandoag".[27]

Another early settler to claim an encounter with a Welsh-speaking Indian was the Reverend Morgan Jones, who told Thomas Lloyd, William Penn's deputy, that he had been captured in 1669 in North Carolina by a tribe of Tuscarora called the Doeg. According to Jones, the chief spared his life when he heard Jones speak Welsh, a tongue he understood. Jones' report says that he then lived with the Doeg for several months preaching the Gospel in Welsh and then returned to the British Colonies where he recorded his adventure in 1686. The historian Gwyn Williams comments "This is a complete farrago and may have been intended as a hoax".[28] There is no evidence for there having been Doeg among the Tuscarora.[29]

Early visitors referred to a rock formation on Fort Mountain in Georgia as a fort, speculating that it was built by Hernando de Soto to defend against the Creek Indians around 1540.[31] This theory was contradicted as early as 1917, as a historian pointed out that de Soto was in the area for less than two weeks.[32] Archaeologists believe the stones were placed there by Native Americans.[33] There is also a theory that the "Welsh Caves" in Desoto State Park, northeastern Alabama, were built by Madoc's party, since local native tribes were not known to have ever practised such stonework or excavation as was found on the site.[34]

In 1810, John Sevier, the first governor of Tennessee, wrote to his friend Major Amos Stoddard about a conversation he had in 1782 with the old Cherokee chief Oconostota concerning ancient fortifications built along the Alabama River. The chief allegedly told him that the forts were built by a white people called "Welsh", as protection against the ancestors of the Cherokee, who eventually drove them from the region.[35] Sevier had also written in 1799 of the alleged discovery of six skeletons in brass armour bearing the Welsh coat-of-arms.[36] He claims that Madoc and the Welsh were first in Alabama.[37]

In 1824, Thomas S. Hinde wrote a letter to John S. Williams, editor of The American Pioneer, regarding the Madoc Tradition. In the letter, Hinde claimed to have gathered testimony from numerous sources that stated Welsh people under Owen Ap Zuinch had come to America in the twelfth century, over three hundred years before Christopher Columbus. Hinde claimed that in 1799, six soldiers had been dug up near Jeffersonville, Indiana, on the Ohio River with breastplates that contained Welsh coat-of-arms.[38]

Thomas Jefferson had heard of Welsh speaking Indian tribes. In a letter written to Meriwether Lewis by Jefferson on 22 January 1804, he speaks of searching for the Welsh Indians said to be up the Missouri.[39][40] The historian Stephen E. Ambrose writes in his history book Undaunted Courage that Thomas Jefferson believed the "Madoc story" to be true and instructed Lewis and Clark to find the descendants of the Madoc Welsh Indians.[41][42]

Francis Lewis (Welshman), a signer of the American Declaration of Independence was captured by Louis-Joseph de Montcalm during the French and Indian War. During captivity he is said to have had a conversation with an Indian chief who spoke Welsh,[37] which apparently saved his life.[43] Stories about this encounter vary. While some report it as a conversation in Welsh with an Indian chief, some 19th century reports do not. J. W. S. Mitchell's 1858 history of Freemasonry reports that during the war the French handed over 30 captives to the Indians and that Lewis heard the Indian guarding him referred to by a name "which reminded him of two Welsh words, signifying "large head"." An interpreter informed that that "large head" was the actual meaning of the name, and later Lewis noted a number of other words that he found so similar to Welsh words meaning the same that the "conclusion that they were derived from the Welsh was irresistible." When the other prisoners were killed, the large headed Indian protected him, taking him to Montreal where he was released during an exchange of prisoners.[44]Charles A. Goodrich reports this as a tradition (italics in the original) adding "This tradition as to the cause of the liberation of Mr. Lewis, is incorrect ; no such affinity existing between the Cymreag, or ancient language of Wales, and the language of any of the indian tribes found in North America. The cause might have been, and probably was, some unusual occurrence, or adventure ; but of its precise nature we are not informed."[45]

The frontiersman James Girty, while acting as a "runner" between the British and Indians, talked much about his encounters with Welsh Indians. He thought there was a connection between them and the Mandan people. Girty compiled a list of over 300 Welsh Indian words and phrases that he had learned from the Welsh Indians.[46]

In all, at least thirteen real tribes, five unidentified tribes, and three unnamed tribes have been suggested as "Welsh Indians."[47] Eventually, the legend settled on identifying the Welsh Indians with the Mandan people, who were said to differ from their neighbours in culture, language, and appearance. The painter George Catlin suggested the Mandans were descendants of Madoc and his fellow voyagers in North American Indians (1841); he found the round Mandan Bull Boat similar to the Welsh coracle, and he thought the advanced architecture of Mandan villages must have been learned from Europeans (advanced North American societies such as the Mississippian and Hopewell cultures were not well known in Catlin's time). Supporters of this claim have drawn links between Madoc and the Mandan mythological figure "Lone Man", who, according to one tale, protected some villagers from a flooding river with a wooden corral.[48]

Several attempts to confirm Madoc's historicity have been made, but historians of early America, notably Samuel Eliot Morison, regard the story as a myth.[49] Madoc's legend has been a notable subject for poets, however. The most famous account in English is Robert Southey's long 1805 poem Madoc, which uses the story to explore the poet's freethinking and egalitarian ideals.[50] Fittingly, Southey wrote Madoc to help finance a trip of his own to America,[51] where he and Samuel Taylor Coleridge hoped to establish a Utopian state they called a "Pantisocracy". Southey's poem in turn inspired the twentieth-century poet Paul Muldoon to write Madoc: A Mystery, which won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize in 1992.[52][53] It explores what may have happened if Southey and Coleridge had succeeded in coming to America to found their "ideal state".[54] In Russian, the noted poet Alexander S. Pushkin composed a short poem "Madoc in Wales" (Медок в Уаллах, 1829) on the topic.[55]

John Smith, historian of Virginia, wrote in 1624 of the Chronicles of Wales reports Madoc went to the New World in 1170 A.D. (over 300 years before Columbus) with some men and women. Smith says the Chronicles say Madoc then went back to Wales to get more people and made a second trip back to the New World.[56][57]

The township of Madoc, Ontario, and the nearby village of Madoc are both named in the prince's memory, as are several local guest houses and pubs throughout North America and the United Kingdom. The Welsh town of Porthmadog (meaning "Madoc's Port" in English) and the village of Tremadog ("Madoc's Town") in the county of Gwynedd are actually named after the industrialist and Member of ParliamentWilliam Alexander Madocks, their principal developer, and additionally influenced by the legendary son of Owain Gwynedd, Madoc ab Owain Gwynedd.[58]

The Prince Madog, a research vessel owned by the University of Wales and P&O Maritime, set sail on 26 July 2001, on her maiden voyage.[59]

A plaque at Fort Mountain State Park in Georgia recounts a nineteenth-century interpretation of the ancient stone wall that gives the site its name. The plaque repeats Tennessee governor John Sevier's statement that the Cherokees believed "a people called Welsh" had built a fort on the mountain long ago to repel Indian attacks.[60]

^"And after he had returned home and declared the pleasant and frutefull countreys that he had seene without inhabitants, and upon the contrarye parte what barreyne and wilde grounde his bretherne and nevewes did murther one an other for, he prepared a number of shippes, and gote with suche men and women as were diserouse to lyve in quietness. And takinge his leave of his frends, toke his journey thytherwarde againe wherefore his is to be presupposed that he and his people enhabited parte of those countreys."[6]

^"The earliest existing fragments of the epic of 'Reynard the Fox' were written in Latin by Flemish priests, and about 1250 a very important version in Dutch was made by Willem the Minstrel, of whom it is unfortunate that we know no more, save that he was the translator of a lost romance, 'Madoc'.[10]

^"An so his was by Britons longe afore discovered before eyther Colonus or Americus lead any Hispaniardes thyther."[6]

^"And at this tyme an other of Owen Gwynedhs sonnes, named Madocke, left the lande in contention betwixt his bretherne, and prepared certaine shippes,with men [and] munition, and sought adventures by the seas. And sayled west levinge the cost of Irelande [so far] north that he came to a land unknown, where he sawe many starange things. And this lande most needs be some parte of that land the which the Hispaniardes do affirme them selves to be the first finders, sith Hannos tyme. For by reason and order of cosmosgraphie this lande to which Madoc came to, most needs bee somme parte of Nova Hispania, or Florida."[16]

^"This Madoc arriving in the Western country, unto the which he came, in the yeare 1170, left most of his people there: and returning back for more of his nation, acquaintance, and friends, to inhabite that faire and large countrie: went thither againe with ten sailes, as I find noted by Gutyn Owen. I am of opinion that the land, where unto he came, was part of Mexico; the causes which make me to think so be these."[18]

^MacMillan, Ken (April 2001). "Discourse on history, geography, and law: John Dee and the limits of the British empire, 1576–80". Canadian Journal of History36 (1): 1.|accessdate= requires |url= (help)

Franklin, Caroline (2003): "The Welsh American Dream: Iolo Morganwg, Robert Southey and the Madoc legend." In English romanticism and the Celtic world, ed. by Gerard Carruthers and Alan Rawes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 69–84.